When Ottway and his group of oil workers board a very shaky and shifty airplane, the surviving group of men find themselves in the middle of a frozen tundra after a horrible storm brings down the entire plane. Protagonist Ottway is often plagued by visions of his dead wife, a woman who apparently died a slow and miserable death. It’s a passing Ottway himself has never gotten over, and never had the chance to mourn. Rather than confronting his misery and pretty much overcoming this terrible loss that left his life a hollow shell, he instead chooses to run away. When we first meet him, he’s war torn, exhausted and enters in to the tamed darkness of his oil rig where he prepares to commit suicide in the abyss of snow. Choosing instead to live, for reasons we can’t quite know deep down, he ends up leading his remaining group of co-workers from the plane wreck and in to the white wasteland before them.
Tag Archives: Survival
Haywire (2012) [Blu-Ray]
“You shouldn’t think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake.”
Criticize director Steven Soderbergh all you want for casting someone who isn’t an actual actor to lead a star rich action film, but director Steven Soderbergh accomplishes something studios are often too narrow minded to try. He casts a woman who is brawn, beauty, and brains all in one. While Hollywood and directors have a fetish for casting wafer thin women who look as if they can barely hold a pencil let alone a machine gun (I’m looking at you Milla Jovovich), star Gina Carano is a woman who is built like a fighter in every sense of the word and approaches every single brilliantly staged fight scene with competence and believability, because there’s no doubting a woman of her presence can handle a man two times her size.
A Lonely Place to Die (2011)
After watching “A Lonely Place to Die” it’s a darn shame that Melissa George isn’t more widely acknowledged by American audiences. She has a unique striking beauty, a dazzling on-screen presence, delivers some truly strong performances, and plays a dashing on-screen heroine. After watching her in the hidden gem “Triangle” and now this near masterpiece of a thriller, I find it shocking that George isn’t a huge star in the states as she should be. She’s prone to playing strong often independent women and here she flexes her muscle and scowl with what can only be described as a teeth grinding thriller that will leave most audiences clutching their seats in agony.
Stake Land (2011)
“Stake Land” is that type of movie that many indie film fans will take a liking to, primarily since every frame glitters with a Sundance gloss that make it suitable for the independent niche that’s become so popular in 2011. Which is not at all a criticism, but the film often feels like it’s appealing mainly to the indie buffs before the horror fans and that may alienate movie geeks to some degree. “Stake Land” from Jim Mickle is yet another post apocalyptic nightmare from Hollywood that ponders on the question: What if vampires took over the world? Mickle paints this world in such a gritty disgusting zeal with blood soaked carnage and raving maniacal vampires, that it often feels like a sequel to “30 Days of Night.”
Hunter Prey (2010)
Director Sandy Collora is known around the country for being one of the most, if not the most talented fan filmmaker of the modern era. Collora is a skilled artist and a man capable of creating his own visions of a mythos that are nothing short of brilliant and dazzling. Not surprising, Collora eventually took time out to create his own world with his own characters and it happens to be a pure work of science fiction excellence that channels the likes of “Hell in the Pacific” to convey a wide scope of a grander story that is scaled down to the personal battle of two soldiers in the middle of a inter-galactic war. Collora paints the picture of two soldiers stranded on an island during a great war that eventually becomes their own personal battle.
F (2010)
I think in the end audiences will find the finale of “F” to be rather infuriating for the simple fact that while director Johannes Roberts doesn’t create a very conventional horror film, he also doesn’t opt for a conventional final scene. And viewers awaiting a huge showdown or some sense of comprehension to the extreme events that have occurred throughout the running time of “F,” many will find that it just doesn’t come to a close as many will be expecting. We live in a world where movies explain everything and anything they can. “F” chooses to leave most of its premise a mystery and keeps the motives of its almost supernatural legion of villains a mystery even after the credits have finished rolling.
127 Hours (2010)
Director Danny Boyle’s dramatic thriller chronicles the hours of Aron Ralston and his battle with a lodged rock that sealed his fate and brought Aron down to Earth to come to grips with his own life and mortality. Much like “In to the Wild,” director Boyle takes what was something of an already interesting story and turns it in to much than an experience by altering it in to a surreal and somewhat spiritual look back at a young man whose life has been filled with excitement and adventure that he used as a form of coping with his inability to allow people to connect to him as he connected to nature and the wilderness. And much like Sean Penn accomplished with “In to the Wild,” he manages to take an accident and uses it as a form of expressing the ideas of fate, coincidence, and the afterlife and a person communing with and ultimately becoming one with the environment around him.